Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, Harper, 1955, p. 61, #93:
The fact of death and nothingness at the end is a certitude unsurpassed by any absolute truth ever discovered. Yet knowing this, people can be deadly serious about their prospects, grievances, duties and trespassings. The only explanation which suggests itself is that seriousness is a means of camouflage: we conceal the triviality and nullity of our lives by taking things seriously. No opiate and no pleasure chase can so effectively mask the terrible truth about man’s life as does seriousness.
Summary
It is certain that we become nothing at death. We all know this. Yet we take life with utmost seriousness. We are aggrieved at the wrongs that have been done to us, and guilty at the wrongs we have done. We care deeply about our future, our legacy, and many other things.
What explains our intense seriousness and deep concern given (i) the known fact that death is annihilation of the person and (ii) the fact that this unavoidable annihilation renders our lives insignificant and not an appropriate object of seriousness?
There is only one explanation. The truth (the conjunction of (i) and (ii)) is terrible and we are loathe to face it. So we hide the triviality and nullity of our lives behind a cloak of seriousness. We deceive ourselves. What we know deep down we will not admit into the full light of consciousness.
Evaluation
There is an element of bluster in Hoffer's argument. It is not certainly known that death is annihilation, although it is reasonably conjectured. But even if death were known to spell the end of the person, why should this render our lives insignificant? One could argue, contra Hoffer, that our lives are significant in the only way they could be significant, namely, in the first-personal, situated, and perspectival way, and that there is no call to view our lives sub specie aeternitatis. It might be urged that the appearance of nullity and insignificance is merely an artifact of viewing our lives from outside.
So one rejoinder to Hoffer would be: yes, death is annihilation, but no, this fact does not render life insignificant. Therefore, there is no tension among:
1) Death is annihilation of the person.
2) Annihilation implies nullity and insignificance.
3) People are serious about their lives.
We don't have to explain why (3) is true given (1) and (2) since (2) is not true.
A second type of rejoinder would be that we don't need to explain why (3) is true given (1) and (2) because (1) is not known to be true. This is the line I take. I would argue as follows
A. We take our lives seriously.
B. That we take them seriously is prima facie evidence that they are appropriately and truly so taken.
C. Our lives would not be serious if death were annihilation. Therefore:
D. Death is not annihilation.
This argument is obviously not rationally compelling, but it suffices to neutralize Hoffer's argument. The argument is not compelling because once could reasonably reject both (B) and (C). Here is Hoffer's argument:
A. We take our lives seriously.
C. Our lives would not be serious if death were annihilation.
~D. Death is annihilation. Therefore:
~B. That we take our lives seriously is not evidence of their seriousness, but a means of hiding from ourselves the terrible truth.
Hoffer and I agree about (C). Our difference is as follows. I am now and always have been deeply convinced that something is at stake in this life, that it matters deeply how we live and comport ourselves, and that it matters far beyond the petty bounds of the individual's spatiotemporal existence. Can I prove it? No. Can anyone prove the opposite? No.
Hoffer, on the other hand, is deeply convinced that in the end our lives signify nothing despite all the sound and fury. In the end death consigns to meaninglessness a life that is indeed played out entirely within its paltry spatiotemporal limits. In the end, our care comes to naught and seriousness is but camoflage of our nullity.
I can't budge the old steveodore and he can't budge me. Belief butts up against belief. There's no knowledge hereabouts.
So once again I say: In the last analysis you must decide what to believe and how to live. Life is a venture and and adventure wherein doxastic risks must be taken. Here as elsewhere one sits as many risks as he runs.
This entry is part of the ongoing debate with the Opponent.
It is interesting that 'nothing' has two opposites. One is 'something.' Call it the logical opposite. The other is 'being.' Call it the ontological opposite. Logically, 'nothing' and 'something' are interdefinable quantifiers:
D1. Nothing is F =df It is not the case that something is F.
D2. Something is F =df it is not the case that nothing is F.
These definitions, which are part of the articulation of the Discursive Framework (DF), give us no reason to think of one term as more basic than the other. Logically, 'nothing' and 'something' are on a par. Logically, they are polar opposites. Anything you can say with the one you can say with the other, and vice versa.
We also note that as quantifiers, as terms expressing logical quantity, 'nothing' and 'something' are not names or referring expressions.
So far I have said nothing controversial.
Ontologically, however, being and nothing are not on a par. They are not polar opposites. Being is primary, and nothing is derivative. (Note the ambiguity of 'Nothing is derivative' as between 'It is not the case that something is derivative' and 'Nothingness is derivative.' The second is meant.)
Now we enter the arena of controversy. For it might be maintained that there are no ontological uses of 'being,' and 'nothing,' that talk of being and nothing is replaceable without remainder by use of the quantifiers defined in (D1) and (D2).
Quine said that "Existence is what existential quantification expresses." I deny it: there is more to existence than what the existential quantifier expresses. Quine's is a thin theory of existence; mine is a thick theory. Metaphorically, existence possesses an ontological thickness. This is very important for metaphysics if true.
I won't be able to prove my point because nothing in philosophy can be proven. But I can argue for my point in a fallacy-free manner.
Suppose we try to define the existential 'is' in terms of the misnamed because question-begging 'existential' quantifier. (The proper moniker is 'particular quantifier.') This is standardly done as follows.
D3. y is/exists =df for some x, y = x.
In plain English, for y to be or exist is for y to be identical to something. For Quine to be or exist is for Quine to be identical to something. In general, to be is to be identical to something, not some one thing of course, but something or other. This thing, however, must exist, and in a sense not captured by (D3). Thus
Quine exists =df Quine is identical to something that exists
and
Pegasus does not exist =df nothing that exists is such that Pegasus is identical to it
or
Pegasus is diverse from everything that exists.
The point, which many find elusive, is that the items in the domain of quantification must be there to be quantified over, where 'there' has not a locative but an existential sense. For if the domain includes nonexistent objects, then, contrary to fact, Pegasus would exist in virtue of being identical to an item in this widened domain.
The conclusion is obvious: one cannot explicate the existential 'is' in terms of the particular quantifier without circularity, without presupposing that things exist in a sense of 'exist' that is not captured by (D3).
Mere logicians won't accept or perhaps even understand this since existence is "odious to the logician" as George Santayana observes. (Scepticism and Animal Faith, Dover, 1955, p. 48, orig. publ. 1923.) You have to have metaphysical aptitude to understand it. (But now I am tending toward the tendentious.)
Intellectual honesty requires that I admit that I am basing myself on an intuition, what J. Maritain calls the intuition of Being. I find it self-evident that the existence of a concrete individual is an intrinsic determination that makes it be as opposed to not be. This implies a real distinction between x and the existence of x. Accordingly, the existence of an individual cannot be reduced to its self-identity: the existence of Quine does not reduce to Quine's being (identical to) Quine, as on the thin theory. And the nonexistence of Pegasus does not reduce to its being diverse from everything. (If to be is to be identical to something, then not to be is to be diverse from everything.)
The Opponent does not share my intuition. In the past I have berated him for being 'existence-blind' but he might plausibly return the 'compliment' by accusing me of double vision: I see Socrates but I also 'see' the existence of Socrates when there is no such 'thing.'
So far, not good: I can't refute the Opponent but he can't refute me. Stand-off. Impasse, a-poria.
Let me try a different tack. Does the Opponent accept
ENN. Ex nihilo nihil fit?
Out of nothing nothing comes. Note that 'nothing' is used here in two different ways, ontologically and logically/quantificationally. For what the hallowed dictum states is that it is not the case that something arises from nothing/Nothingness.
Now if the Opponent accepts the truth or even just the meaningfulness of (ENN), then he must admit that there are two senses of 'nothing,' the logical and the ontological, and correspondingly, two senses of 'something.' If so, then being and nothing cannot be exhaustively understood in terms of logical quantifiers and propsitional negation, and then the thin theory bites the dust.
But if the thin theory succumbs, then there is more to existence than can be captured within the Discursive Framework.
One of the reasons I gave this weblog the title Maverick Philosopher is because I align neither with the analytic nor with the Continental camp. Study everything, I say, and drink from every stream. Reverting to the camp metaphor, when did the camps become two? In dead earnest this occurred when Heidegger burst onto the scene in 1927 with Being and Time. I agree with Peter Simons: "Probably no individual was more responsible for the schism in philosophy than Heidegger." (Quoted in Overgaard, et al., An Introduction to Metaphilosophy, Cambridge UP, 2013, 110.) It is not as if Heidegger set out to split the mainstream whose headwaters were in Franz Brentano into two tributaries; it is just that he started publishing things that the analytic types, who had some sympathy for Heidegger's main teacher Husserl, could not relate to at all.
If I were were to select two writings that best epitomize the depth of the Continental-analytic clash near the time of its outbreak, they would be Heidegger's 1929 What is Metaphysics? and Carnap's 1932 response, "On the Overcoming of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language." (In fairness to Carnap, let us note that his Erkenntnis piece is more than a response to Heidegger inasmuch as it calls into question the meaningfulness of all metaphysics.)
To nail my colors to the mast, I take the side of Heidegger in his dispute with Carnap and I heartily condemn the knee-jerk bigotry of the thousands upon thousands of analytic types who mock and deride Heidegger while making no attempt to understand what he is about. The cynosure of their mockery and derision is of course the notorious sentence
Das Nichts selbst nichtet. (GA IX, 114) The Nothing itself nihilates.
This is the line upon which the analytic bigots invariably seize while ignoring everything else: its place in the essay in question and the wider context, that of Being and Time and other works of the early Heidegger, not to mention the phenomenological, transcendental, existential, life-philosophical, and scholastic sources of Heidegger's thinking.
Now, having called them knee-jerk bigots and having implied what is largely true, namely that the analytic Heidegger-bashers are know-nothings when it comes to Heidegger's philosophical progenitors, and thus having paid them back in their own coin, I will now drop all invective and patiently try to explain how and why Heidegger is not talking nonsense in the essay in question. This will require a series of posts. It will also require some attention and open-mindedness on the part of the reader as well as some familiarity with the two essays in question.
Heidegger's Alleged Violation of Logical Syntax
For Carnap it is obvious that existence and nonexistence are purely logical notions, more precisely, logico-syntactic notions. The sentence 'Cats exist,' for example, does not predicate existence of individual cats. It says no more than 'Something is a cat.' But then 'Cats do not exist' says no more than 'Nothing is a cat.' This sentence in turn is equivalent to 'It is not the case that something is a cat.'
'Nothing,' then, is not a name, but a mere bit of logical syntax. Carnap calls it a "logical particle." (71) And the same goes for 'something.' If I met nobody on the trail this morning, it does not follow that I met somebody named 'nobody.' (Bad joke: I say I met nobody, and you ask how he's doing.) If nothing is in my wallet, that is not to say that there is something in my wallet named 'nothing.' It is to say that:
It it not the case that something is in my wallet It is not the case that, for some x, x is in my wallet For all x, x is not in my wallet ~(∃x)(x is in my wallet) (x) ~(x is in my wallet).
The above are equivalents. It should be obvious then, that in its mundane uses 'nothing' is not a name but a logico-syntactic notion that can be expressed using a quantifier (either universal or particular) and the sign for propositional negation. By a mundane use of 'nothing' I mean a use that presupposes that things exist. Thus when I assert that nothing is in my pocket, I presuppose that things exist and the content of my assertion is that no one of these existing things is in my pocket. (Don't worry about the fact that it is never strictly true that there is nothing in my pocket given that there is air, lint, and space in my pocket.)
I think we can all (including Heidegger) agree that in their mundane uses, sentences of the form 'Nothing is F' can be translated, salva significatione, into sentences of the form 'It is not the case that something is F' or 'Everything is not F.' The translations remove 'Nothing' from subject position and by the same stroke remove the temptation to construe 'nothing' as a name. Not that Heidegger ever succumbed to that temptation.
But now the question arises whether every use of 'nothing' fits the deflationary schema. Is every meaningful use of 'nothing' the use of a logical particle? Consider ex nihilo, nihil fit, 'Out of nothing, nothing comes.' The second occurrence of 'nothing' readily submits to deflation, but not the first. Suppose we write
It is not the case that something comes from nothing.
This removes the quantificational use of 'nothing' in 'Out of nothing, nothing comes' but leaves us with a 'substantive' use. Of course, 'nothing' cannot refer to or name any being or any collection of beings. That is perfectly evident. And Heidegger says as much. But 'nothing' does appear to refer to, or name, the absence of every being. The thought is:
Had there been nothing at all, it is not the case that something could have arisen from it.
The 'at all' is strictly redundant: it merely serves to remind the reader that 'nothing' is being used strictly. Now could there have been nothing at all? Is it possible that there be nothing at all? More importantly for present purposes: Is this a meaningful question? 'Possibly, nothing exists' is meaningful only if 'Nothing exists' is meaningful. So consider first the unmodalized
There is nothing at all
or
Nothing exists.
These are perfectly meaningful sentences. That is not to say that they are true, nor is it to say that they are possibly true. Suppose they are not possibly true. Then they are necessarily false. But if necessarily false, then false, and if false, then meaningful. For meaningfulness is a necessary condition of having a truth-value. 'Nothing exists,' then, is a meaningful sentence, and this despite the fact that 'nothing' cannot here be replaced by a phrase containing only a quantifier and the sign for negation.
For Carnap, however, the above are meaningless metaphysical pseudo-sentences because they violate logical syntax. If you try to translate the second sentence into logical notation, into what Carnap calls a "logically correct language"(70) you get a syntactically meaningless string:
~(∃x)(x exists).
This is meaningless because 'exists' cannot serve as a first-level predicate in a logically correct language. Existence is not a property of individuals. 'Exist(s)' is a quantifier, a bit of logical syntax, not a name of a property or of any entity. Therefore, 'Nothing exists' is as syntactically meaningless as the ill-formed formula
~(∃x)(∃x(. . . x . . .)).
Two Interim Conclusions
The first is that Heidegger commits no schoolboy blunder in logic. He does not think that a use of 'Nothing is in the drawer' commits one to the existence of something in the drawer. He cannot be charitably read as assuming that every use of 'nothing' is a referring use. The second conclusion is that Carnap has not shown that every occurrence of 'nothing' can be replaced by a phrase containing a quantifier and the sign for negation. He has therefore not shown that a sentence like 'Nothing exists' is a syntactically meaningless pseudo-sentence.
Heidegger Partially Vindicated
But now the way is clear to ask some Heidegger-type questions.
I showed above that 'nothing' has meaningful uses as a substantive, uses that cannot be eliminated by the Carnap method. And I suggested that 'nothing' could name the total absence of all beings. If this total absence is a possibility, as it would be if every being is a contingent being, then Nothing (das Nichts) would have some 'reality,' if only the reality of a mere possibility. It could not be dismissed as utterly nichtig or nugatory. Nor could questions about it be so dismissed.
One question that Heidegger poses concerns the relation of negation (Verneinung) as a specific intellectual operation (spezifische Verstandeshandlung) to Nothing:
Gibt es das Nichts nur, weil es das Nicht, d. h. die Verneinung gibt? Oder liegt es umgekehrt? Gibt es die Verneinung und das Nicht nur, weil es das Nichts gibt? (GA IX, 108)
Is there Nothing only because there is the Not and negation? Or is it the other way around? Is there negation and the Not only because there is Nothing?
I grant that with questions like these we are at the very limit of intelligibility, at the very boundary of the Sayable. But you are no philosopher if you are not up against these limits and seeking, if possible, to transcend them.
As a matter of fact, things exist. But suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all. Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness? Is this thought thinkable? Is it thinkable that there be nothing at all? And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all? Could there have been nothing at all? If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists, and (ii) everything that exists exists contingently, which respectively imply that both of the following are false:
(1) and (2) are not the same proposition: (2) entails (1) but not conversely. If you confuse them you will be justly taxed with an operator shift fallacy.
Phylogenetically, this topic goes back to Parmenides of Elea. Ontogenetically, it goes back to what was probably my first philosophical thought when I was about eight or so years old. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!) I had been taught that God created everything distinct from himself. One day, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I thought: "Well, suppose God never created anything. Then only God would exist. And if God didn't exist, then there would be nothing at all." At this my head began to swim and I felt a strange wonder that I cannot quite recapture, although the memory remains strong 50 years later. The unutterably strange thought that there might never have been anything at all — is this thought truly thinkable or does it cancel itself in the very attempt to think it?
I am torn between two positions. On the one it is provable that necessarily something exists. On the other, it is not provable.
Here is one sort of argument for the thesis that necessarily something exists and that it is therefore impossible that there be nothing at all. The argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum.
1. There are no propositions. (Assumption for reductio)
2. (1) is either true or false.
3. Whatever is either true or false is a proposition. (This is by definition. Propositions are truth-bearers or vehicles of the truth-values. They are whatever it is that is appropriately characterizable as either true or false.)
Therefore
4. If (1) is true, then there is at least one proposition. (2, 3)
Therefore
5. If (1) is false, then there is at least one proposition. (2, 3)
Therefore
6. Necessarily, there is at least one proposition.
Therefore
7. (1) is necessarily false.
Therefore
8. It is not possible that nothing exists.
Skeptical Rejoinder
I don't buy it. Had there been nothing at all, there would not have been any propositions, any states of affairs, any way things are, any properties, any truth, any Law of Non-Contradiction or Law of Excluded Middle or Principle of Bivalence, any distinction between true and false, any distinctions at all. There would have been just nothing at all. Your proof that this is impossible begs the question by assuming or presupposing the whole interconnected framework of propositions, truth and falsehood, etc., including your modal principles and other logical principles.
You can't prove that there must be something if you presuppose that there must be something. Circular arguments are of course valid, but no circular argument is a proof.
At the very most, what you demonstrate is that WE cannot operate without presupposing the Logical Framework — to give it a name. At the very most, you demonstrate that the Logical Framework (LF) is a transcendental presupposition of OUR discursive activities, in roughly the Kantian sense of 'transcendental.' You do not succeed in demonstrating that Being itself or any being exists independently of us. Your proof may have transcendental import, but it fails to secure ontological import. Why do you think that Being itself, independently of us, is such that necessarily something exists?
For example, you think that there must be a total way things are such that, if there were nothing at all, then that would be the way things are, in which case there would, in the end, be a way things are. But how do you know that? How do you know that your presupposition of a way things are is more than a merely transcendental presupposition as opposed to a structure grounded in the very Being of things independently of us?
I grant you that the LF is necessary, but its necessity is conditional: it depends on us, and we might not have existed. For all you have shown, there could have been nothing at all.
Why does it matter? What's at stake?
Now this is a highly abstract and abstruse debate. Does it matter practically or 'existentially'?
If there could have been nothing at all, then all is contingent and no Absolute exists. An Absolute such as God must be a necessary being. An Absolute functions as the real-ground of the existence, intelligibility, and value of everything distinct from it. If there is no Absolute, then existence is absurd, i.e., without ultimate ground (source and reason), without sense and intelligibility. Now if existence is absurd, then human existence is absurd. So if there could have been nothing at all, then human existence is absurd. This is why our question matters. It matters because it matters whether our existence is absurd.
Mike Valle on Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
Could everything have come into being without a cause? Mike Valle tells me about an annoying interlocutor who thinks it certain that this is impossible because it is certain that ex nihilo nihil fit: from nothing nothing comes. Mike, if I understand him, doubts the certainty of the principle. He reasons: had there been nothing at all, then there would have been nothing to prevent something from arising. In particular, had there been nothing at all, there would have been no such truth as ex nihilo nihil fit.
Mike's reasoning presupposes that it is possible that there be nothing at all. So his suggestion comports well with the Skeptical Rejoinder above.
As for myself, I am left with the thought that is reasonable to hold that there must be something — after all I argued the matter out rigorously — but also reasonable to hold the opposite. This seems to suggest that here we have a question that reason cannot decide. So how do we decide it? By personal decision? By mystical intuition? By acceptance of divine revelation? In some other way? In no way?
When I first saw this article, I thought to myself, "Oh boy, another load of stinking, steaming, scientistic bullshit by some know-nothing science writer or physicist for me to sink my logic shovel into!"
You have heard it said, 'Take the bull by the horns.' But I say unto you, 'Take the bull by the shovel!'
But then I started reading and realized that the author knows what he is talking about. Philosophers won't find anything new here, but it is an adequate piece of popular writing that may be of use to the educated layman.
I don't believe I have ever read a column by Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club that is more penetrating, thought-provoking, or chilling than his Seven Gambit. Excerpts:
Just as soon as Israel accepted an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire Hamas fired 47 rockets killing one Israeli citizen. Anyone who has followed the conflict could have predicted this with certainty; the point of a ceasefire — for a terrorist organization — is to break it for exactly the same reason it purposely attacks women and children.
Dr. Anna Geifman tried to explain that the reason why innocents are selected as terror targets is because “children are the last consecrated absolute”. That is just why they must be killed in the cruelest way possible. For “militant nihilism strives to ruin first and foremost what their contemporaries hold sacred”.
Nihilism isn’t the absence of a belief. It is something subtly different: it is the belief in nothing. The most powerful weapon of terrorism is therefore the unyielding No. “No I will not give up. No I will not tell the truth. No I will not play fair. No I will not spare children. No I will not stop even if you surrender to me; I will not cease even if you give me everything you have, up to and including your children’s lives. Nothing short of destroying me absolutely can make me stop. And therefore I will defeat you even if you kill me. Because I will make you pay the price in guilt for annihilating me.”
It’s an extremely powerful weapon. The Absolute No is a devastating attack on the self-image and esteem of civilization. Hamas will demonstrate the No, the Nothing. It will show that deep down inside Israelis — and Americans — are animals like them.
[. . .]
The power of Hamas lies in that they will never stop hating. No ceasefire, concession, negotiation or entreaty will move them. That is their inhuman strength. The Jews can even exterminate them, but only at the cost of destroying all the ideals they hold dear. If the last Hamas activist could speak he would say this:
“Shoot! I am the last. Carry out your ethnic cleansing, just as the Nazis tried with you. You will never be able to look yourself in the mirror again. The price of victory is to win on our terms. Nothing will remain of your precious Jewish self-esteem, of the illusion that you are a civilization dedicated to morality. What will you do after you kill me? Go to your synagogue and a hymn of praise to your God?
“At that moment your faith will desert you. For you claim your God does not desire blood, that yours is a God of love and I say therefore He is false. The only real Gods are those of Hate. A God that does not live by blood does not exist as my God who lives by blood exists; and when you pull the trigger you will be worshipping at my altar! I have won at last. Come to prayer. Come to Islam.”
[. . .]
Wars through history have exacted an irreparable spiritual price from its [their] combatants.
[. . .]
It’s not an original thought. William Tecumseh Sherman knew before Collins that War is Hell; that the only excuse for it was the belief that you could in the subsequent peace, chain up the devils. He wrote in his letters, “you cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it … If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.”
Nor has its character changed much. Curtis LeMay, during what we remember as the Good War, shared his formula for defeating the enemy. “If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”
Human beings are remarkably good at calling up the devil in their fellow human beings. They start out Christian enough, but give them time. In the first Christmas of the Great War, when fighting was but a few months old, there enough fellow-feeling among the combatants remained to spontaneously create what is now remembered as the Christmas Truce.
Through the week leading up to Christmas, parties of German and British soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings and songs between their trenches; on occasion, the tension was reduced to the point that individuals would walk across to talk to their opposite numbers bearing gifts. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many soldiers from both sides—as well as, to a lesser degree, from French units—independently ventured into “no man’s land”, where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing. Troops from both sides were also friendly enough to play games of football with one another.
By the next year they were modifying their bayonets so it would hurt more when you stabbed the enemy. When we look at Hamas we are looking at some[thing] very old and ancient. Does the devil win in Seven? For that matter does he win on earth?
Say no if you can. For Hamas is determined to prove that you too are like them. Just like them.
Our Czech friend Lukas Novak sent me a paper in which, drawing upon John Duns Scotus, he rejects the following principle of reference:
(PR) It is impossible to refer to that which is not.
In this entry I will first pull some quotations from Novak's paper and then raise some questions about the view he seems to be endorsing.
I. Novak's Scotistic View
Novak writes,
Scotus’ position can be simply characterized as a consistent rejection of the PR . . . . According to Scotus, the objects of any intentional relations . . . simply are not required to have any ontological status whatsoever, or, as Scotus puts it, any esse verum. The “being” expressed by the predicates exploited by Francis, like “to be known” (esse cognitum), “to be intelligible” (esse intelligibile), “to be an image of a paradigm” (esse exemplatum), “to be represented” (esse repraesentatum) and the like, is not real or true in any way, irrespectively of whether the relation involved concerns God or man.
[. . .]
It is not necessary to assume any esse essentiae in objects of knowledge: instead, Scotus speaks of “esse deminutum” here, but he points out emphatically that this “diminished being” is being only “secundum quid”, i.e., in an improper, qualified sense – this is the point of Scotus’ famous criticism of Henry of Ghent laid out in the unique question of dist. 36 of the first book of his Ordinatio. If you look for some real being in the object of intellection that it should have precisely in virtue of being such an object, there is none to be found. The only real being to be found here is the real being of the intellection, to which the esse deminutum of the intellected object is reduced:
[. . .]
In other words: if we were to make something like an inventory of reality, we should not list any objects having mere esse deminutum. By speaking about objects in intelligible being we do not take on any ontological commitment (to use the Quinean language) over and above the commitment to the existence of the intellections directed to these objects.
[. . .]
And now the crucial point: it is precisely this intelligibility, imparted to the objects by the divine intellect, what [that] makes human conceiving of the same objects possible, irrespectively of whether they have any real being or not:
[. . .]
In other words: the most fundamental reason why the PR is false is, according to Scotus, the fact that a sufficient condition of the human capacity to refer to something is the intelligibility of that something. This intelligibility, however, is bestowed on things in virtue of their being conceived, prior to creation, by the absolute divine intellect. This divine conceiving, however, neither produces nor presupposes any genuine being in the objects; for it is a universal truth that cognition is an immanent operation, one whose effect remains wholly in its subject (and so does not really affect its object) – in this elementary point divine cognition is not different. Accordingly, objects need not have any being whatsoever in order to be capable of being referred to. (emphasis added)
II. Some Questions and Comments
As a matter of fact we do at least seem to refer to nonexistent objects and say things about them, true and false. Alexius von Meinong's celebrated goldner Berg, golden mountain, may serve as an example. The golden mountain is made of gold; it is a mountain; it does not exist; it is an object of my present thinking; it is indeterminate with respect to height; it is 'celebrated' as it were among connoisseurs of this arcana; it is Meinong's favorite example of a merely possible individual; it — the very same one I am talking about now — was discussed by Kasimir Twardowski, etc.
Now if this seeming to refer is an actual referring, if we do refer to the nonexistent in thought and overt speech, then it is possible that we do so. Esse ad posse valet illatio. But how the devil is it possible that we do so? (PR) is extremely plausible: it is difficult to understand how there could be reference to that which has no being, no esse, whatsoever.
If I understand Novak, he wants a theory that satisfies the following desiderata or criteria of adequacy
D1. Possibilism is to be avoided. We cannot maintain that the merely possible has any sort of being.
D2. Actualist ersatzism is to be avoided. We cannot maintain that there are actual items such as Plantingian haecceities that stand in for mere possibilia.
D3. The phenomenological fact that intentionality is relational or at least quasi-relational is to be respected and somehow accommodated. No adverbial theories!
D4. Eliminativism about intentionality/reference is to be avoided. Intentionality is real!
D5. Nominalist reductionism according to which reference is a merely intralinguistic phenomenon is to be avoided. When I refer to something, whether existent or nonexistent, I am getting outside of language!
Novak does not list these desiderata; I am imputing them to him. He can tell me if my imputation is unjust. In any case, I accept (D1)-(D5): an adequate theory must satisfy these demands. Now how does Novak's theory satisfy them?
Well, he brings God into the picture. Some will immediately cry deus ex machina! But I think Novak can plausibly rebut this charge. If God is brought on the stage in an ad hoc manner to get us out of a jam, then a deus ex machina objection has bite. But Novak and his master Scotus have independent reasons for positing God. See my substantial post on DEM objections in philosophy, here.
Suppose we have already proven, or at least given good reasons for, the existence of God. Then he can be put to work. Or, as my esteemed teacher J. N. Findlay once said, "God has his uses."
So how does it work? It is sufficient for x to be an object of thought or reference by us that it be intelligible. This intelligibility derives from the divine intellect who, prior to creation, conceives of such items as the golden mountain. But this conceiving does not impart to them any real being. Nor does it presuppose that they have any real being. In themselves, they have no being at all. God's conceiving of nonexistent objects is a wholly immanent operation the effect of which remains wholly within the subject of the operation, namely, the divine mind. And yet the nonexistent objects acquire intelligibility. It is this intelligibility that makes it possible for us finite minds to think the nonexistent without it being the case that nonexistent objects have any being at all.
That is the theory, assuming I have understood it. And it does seem to satisfy the desiderata with the possible exception of (D3). But here is one concern. The theory implies that when I think about the golden mountain I am thinking about an operation wholly immanent to the divine intellect. But that is not what I seem to be thinking about. What I seem to be thinking about has very few properties (being golden, being a mountain) and perhaps their analytic entailments, and no hidden properties such as the property of being identical to an operation wholly immanent to the divine intellect. An intentional object has precisely, all and only, the properties it is intended as having.
Connected with this concern is the suspicion that on Novak's theory the act-object distinction is eliminated, a distinction that is otherwise essential to his approach. He wants to deny that merely intentional objects have any being of their own. So he identifies them with divine conceivings. But this falls afoul of a point insisted on by Twardowski. (See article below.)
My merely imagined table does not exist in reality, 'outside' my mind. But it also does not exist 'in' my mind as identical to the act of imagining it or as a proper part of the act of imagining it, or as any sort of mental content, as Twardowski clearly saw. Otherwise, (i) the merely imagined table would have the nature of an experience, which it does not have, and (ii) it would exist in reality, when it doesn't, and (iii) it would have properties that cannot be properties of mental acts or contents such as the property of being spatially extended.
My point could be put like this. The typical merely intentional, hence nonexistent, object such as the golden mountain does not have the nature of an experience or mental act; it is an object of such an act. But if merely intentional objects are divine conceivings, then they have the nature of an experience. Ergo, etc. Novak's theory appears to fall into psychologism.
Have you read Nicholas Rescher's Nonexistents Then and Now? I read it recently and thought I'd bring it to your attention because it's relevant to your recent posts on fiction. If I understand the article, Rescher would agree with you that a fictional man is not a man, but he would say the same of a merely possible man (denying premise 6 in your post More on Ficta and Impossibilia): he argues that because nonexistents are necessarily incomplete, they are not individuals but schemata for individuals. In response to your post Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization Rescher would probably say that the "table" before your mind is not an individual table but a schema for an individual table, a "schema to which many such individuals might answer" (p. 376). As your concluding apory implies, the argument against the possibility of actualizing Hamlet might apply to any nonexistent. Rescher seems to think it does. It would be interesting to read some of your thoughts on Rescher's essay, but I do see that you're now considering a different problem.
I was aware of this article, but hadn't studied it carefully until today. I thank the reader for reminding me of it. What he says about it is accurate. Herewith, some preliminary comments.
1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work. I have added comments in red.
To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours — the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology. All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.] To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis — assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.] For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance — of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](364, emphasis added)
As my reader is aware, Rescher wants to say about the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance. But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation. The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized. He is an impossible item. I am tempted to say that not even divine power could bring about his actualization, any more than it could restore a virgin. But the merely possible is precisely — possibly actual! The merely possible is intrinsically such as to be apt for existence, unlike the purely fictional which is intrinsically such as to be barred from actuality.
2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes. Describing the "medieval mainstream," (362) Rescher lumps mere possibillia and pure ficta together as entia rationis. For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27) Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects. Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.
3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional. And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality. But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual? Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:
a. The merely possible is not actual.
b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).
c. Whatever is real is actual.
Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true. Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.
What are the possible solutions given that the triad is is genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble? I count exactly five possible solutions.
S1. Eliminativism. The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia. One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.
S2. Conceptualism. Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs. There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view. See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)
S3. Actualism/Ersatzism. Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs. One looks for substitute entities to go proxy for the mere possibles. Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn. For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated.
S4. Extreme Modal Realism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. David Lewis. There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta. The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real. But no world is absolutely actual. Each is merely actual at itself.
S5. Theologism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds. Consider the possibility of there being unicorns. This is a mere possibility since it is not actual. But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds. There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say. The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power.
4. Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity. For Rescher, "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems — a resolution is automatically available." (371) Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing. Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phaseology. (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)
But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses. He gives essentially the following argument on p. 378. This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.
A. All genuine individuals are complete.
B. All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.
C. No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.
Therefore
D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.
But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete? Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us. But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible. He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible. Consider the following sentences
d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.
e. Bill Clinton remained single.
f. Bill Clinton married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.
Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs. There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds. Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds? I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary. But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having. So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals. But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.
It is interesting that 'nothing' has two opposites. One is 'something.' Call it the logical opposite. The other is 'being.' Call it the ontological opposite. Logically, 'nothing' and 'something' are interdefinable:
D1. Nothing is F =df It is not the case that something is F
D2. Something is F =df it is not the case that nothing is F.
These definitions give us no reason to think of one term as more basic than the other. Logically, they are on a par. Logically, they are polar opposites. Anything you can say with the one you can say with the other, and vice versa.
Ontologically, however, being and nothing are not on a par. They are not polar opposites. Being is primary, and nothing is derivative. (Note the ambiguity of 'Nothing is derivative' as between 'It is not the case that something is derivative' and 'Nothingness is derivative.' The second is meant.)
Suppose we try to define the existential 'is' in terms of the misnamed 'existential' quantifier. (The proper moniker is 'particular quantifier.') We try this:
y is =df for some x, y = x.
In plain English, for y to be or exist is for y to be identical to something. For Quine to be or exist is for Quine to be identical to something. This thing, however, must exist. Thus
Quine exists =df Quine is identical to something that exists
and
Pegasus does not exist =df nothing that exists is such that Pegasus is identical to it.
The conclusion is obvious: one cannot explicate the existential 'is' in terms of the particular quantifier without circularity, without presupposing that things exist.
I have now supplied enough clues for the reader to advance to the insight that the ontological opposite of 'nothing,' is primary.
Mere logicians won't get this since existence is "odious to the logician" as George Santayana observes. (Scepticism and Animal Faith, Dover, 1955, p. 48, orig. publ. 1923.)
According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) I've long believed Hume to be right about this. I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon: Our minds are necessarily such that, no matter what we think of as existing, we can just as easily think of as not existing. This includes God. Now God, to be divine, must be a necessary being, indeed a necessary concretum. (God cannot be an abstract entity.) Therefore, even a necessary being such as God is conceivable or thinkable as nonexistent.
Try it for yourself. Think of God together with all his omni-attributes and then think of God as not existing. Our atheist pals have no trouble on this score. The nonexistence of God is thinkable without logical contradiction.
Note the ambiguity of 'conceivable.' It could mean thinkable, or it could mean thinkable without (internal) logical contradiction. Round squares are conceivable in the first sense but not in the second. If round squares were in no sense conceivable, how could we think about them and pronounce them broadly logically impossible? Think about it!
Now try the experiment with an abstract necessary being such as the number 7 or the proposition *7 is prime.* Nominalists have no trouble conceiving the nonexistence of such Platonica, and surely we who are not nominalists can understand their point of view. In short, absolutely everything can be thought of, without logical contradiction, as not existing.
Humius vindicatus est.
But doesn't the bolded sentence contradict what I said in earlier posts about the impossibility of there being nothing at all, that there must be something or other, and that this can be known a priori by pure thought?
On the one hand, I tend to think that I can attain positive rational insight into the necessity of there being something or other, and thus the impossibility of there being nothing at all. On the other hand, I tend to think that everything is conceivably nonexistent, which implies that no such positive rational insight is possible.
Consider the following reasoning.
It is actually the case that something exists. The question is whether there might have been nothing at all. If the answer is in the negative, then it is necessarily the case that something exists. But don't confuse the following two propositions:
Necessarily (Something exists)
Something (necessarily exists).
The first says that every possible world is such that there is something or other in it; the second says that some one thing is such that it exists in every possible world. The second entails the first, but the first does not entail the second. I need only show that the first proposition is true, though I may end up showing that the second is true as well.
Moreover, I am concerned to show that we can attain positive rational insight into the first proposition's truth by sheer thinking. But now it appears that the tension in my thinking is a bare-faced contradiction. For the following cannot both be true:
(H) Everything is conceivably nonexistent. (P) There is something the nonexistence of which is inconceivable.
And what is that thing whose nonexistence is inconceivable? What is the case. For if something exists, then that is the case. And if nothing exists, then that is the case. Either way, there is what is the case. Either way, there is the way things are. The way things are is not nothing, but something: a definite state of affairs.
The thought that there might have been nothing at all is the thought that it might have been the case that there is nothing at all. But if that had been the case, then something would have existed, namely, what is the case. Therefore, the thought that there might have been nothing at all refutes itself. By sheer thinking I can know something about reality, namely, that necessarily something exists. By pure thought I can arrive at a certain conclusion about real existence.
The argument can be couched in terms of possible worlds. A merely possible world is a total way things might have been. There cannot be a possible world in which nothing exists, for a possible world is not nothing, but something. Think of a possible world as a maximal proposition. Could there be a maximal proposition that entails that nothing exists? No, for that very proposition is something that exists.
So there has to be at least one thing, the proposition that nothing exists. And it has to be that that proposition is necessarily false, in which case its negation is necessarily true. So it is necessarily true that something exists.
Or one can argue as follows.
We have the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept true proposition is instantiated, and there necessarily exists at least one truth, namely, the truth that the concept true proposition is instantiated.
This is a sound ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth using only the concept true proposition, the law of excluded middle, and the unproblematic principle that, for any proposition p, p entails that p is true. By 'proposition' here I simply mean whatever can be appropriately characterized as either true or false. That there are propositions in this innocuous sense cannot be reasonably denied.
So here too we have a seemingly knock-down proof of the necessary existence of something by sheer thinking. Thought makes contact with reality 'by its own power' without the mediation of the senses. (For future rumination: Does this refute the Thomist principle that nothing is in the intelect that is not first in the senses?)
(H) Nothing is such that its existence can be seen to be necessary by thought alone.
(P) Something is such that its existence can be seen to be necessary by thought alone.
I don't know how to resolve this. I am of two minds. Parmenides and Hume are battling for hegemony in my shallow pate.
Can I conceive (think without internal logical contradiction) the nonexistence of what is the case, or the way things are? The Humean part of my mind says Yes: you are conceiving an absolute Other to discursive thought, a realm in which the laws of logic do not hold. You are conceiving the Transdiscursive!
The Parmenidean part of my mind says No: there is no Transdiscursive; Thought and Being are 'the same.'
Consider a particular hole H in a piece of swiss cheese. H is not nothing. It has properties. It has, for example, a shape: it is circular. The circular hole has a definite radius, diameter, and circumference. It has a definite area equal to pi times the radius squared. If the piece of cheese is 1/16th of an inch thick, then the hole is a disk having a definite volume. H has a definite location relative to the edges of the piece of cheese and relative to the other holes. H has causal properties: it affects the texture and flexibility of the cheese and its resistance to the tooth. H is perceivable by the senses: you can see it and touch it. You touch a hole by putting a finger or other appendage into it and experiencing no resistance.
Now if anything has properties, then it exists. H has properties; so H exists.
H exists and the piece of cheese exists. Do they exist in the same way? Not by my lights. The hole depends for its existence on the piece of cheese; the latter does not depend for its existence on the former. H is a particular, well-defined, indeed wholly determninate, absence of cheese. It is a particular, existing absence. As an absence of cheese it depends for its existence on the cheese of which it is the hole.
So I say the hole exists in a different way than the piece of cheese. It has a dependent mode of existence whereas the piece of cheese has a relatively independent mode of existence.
On the basis of this and other examples I maintain that there are modes of being. To be precise, I maintain that it is intelligible that there be modes of being. This puts me at odds with those, like van Inwagen, who consider the idea unintelligible and rooted in an elementary mistake:
. . . the thick conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what properly belongs to the nature of a chair — or of a human being or of a universal or of God — to the being of the chair. (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge 2001, p. 4)
Did I make a mistake above, the mistake van Inwagen imputes to thick theorists? Did I mistakenly transfer what properly belongs to the nature of the hole — its dependence on the piece of cheese — to the being (existence) of the hole?
I plead innocent. Perhaps it is true that it is the nature of holes in general that they depend for their existence on the things in which they are holes. But H is a particular, spatiotemporally localizable, hole in a particular piece of cheese. Since H is a particular existing hole, it cannot be part of H's multiply exemplifiable nature that it depend for its existence on the particular piece of cheese it is a hole in. The dependence of H on its host is due to H's mode of existence, not to its nature.
Suppose there are ten quidditatively indiscernible holes in the piece of cheese: H1, H2, . . . H10. Each exists. Each has its own existence. But each has the very same nature. How then can this common nature be the factor responsible for making H1 or H2 or H3, etc., dependent on the particular piece of cheese? The dependence of each hole on its host is assignable not to the nature common to all ten holes but to each hole's existence as a mode of its existence.
Now of course this will not convince any thin theorist. But then that is not my goal. My goal is to show that the thick theory is rationally defensible and not sired by any obvious 'mistake.' If any 'mistakes' are assignable then I 'd say they are assignable with greater justice to the partisans of the thin theory.
Talk of 'mistakes,' though, is out of place in serious philosophy. For apart from clear-cut logical blunders such as affirming the consequent, quantifier shift fallacies, etc. any alleged 'mistakes' will rest on debatable substantive commitments.
The book is due back at the library today, and good riddance. A few parting shots to put this turkey to bed. The book is a mishmash of bad philosophy, badly written, and popularization of contemporary cosmology. I cannot comment on the accuracy of the popularization, but the philosophy is indeed bad and demonstrates why we need philosophy: to debunk bad philosophy, especially the scientistic nonsense our culture is now awash in. I am tempted once more to quote some Kraussian passages and pick them apart. But besides being a waste of time, that would be the literary equivalent of beating up a cripple or rolling a drunk.
In my post of 29 April I put my finger on the central problem with the book: the 'bait and switch.' Krauss baits us with the old Leibniz question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' (See On the Ultimate Origin of Things, 1697.) Having piqued our interest, he switches to a different question, actually to several different questions, one of which is: "Why is there ‘stuff’, instead of empty space?" (Click on above link for reference.) Apparently our man forgot that empty space is not nothing.
Bait and switch. I recall an old Tareyton cigarette commercial from the '60s: I'd rather fight than switch. Apparently Krauss would rather switch than fight an intellectually honest fight.
Here are links to my more substantial, but no less polemical, Krauss posts.
Ed Feser picks up on the 'bait and switch' theme in his cleverly titled First Things review, Not Understanding Nothing.
I characterized Rejectionism with respect to the question why there is anything at all as follows: "The rejectionist rejects the question as ill-formed, as senseless." London Ed suggests that Wittgenstein may be lumped in with the rejectionists. He has a point, though I do insist on the distinction between taking 'Why is there anything at all?' as an explanation-seeking why-question and taking it as a mere expression of wonder at the sheer existence of things. We know that Wittgenstein was struck with wonder at the sheer existence of things. What is now to be discussed is whether Wittgenstein can be read as making a rejectionist response to the ultimate explanation-seeking why-question.
Ed quotes from Anthony Kenny's book, Wittgenstein:
Logic depends on there being something in existence and there being facts; it is independent of what the facts are, of things being thus and so. That there are facts is not something which can be expressed in a proposition. If one wants to call there being facts a matter of experience, then one can say logic is empirical. But when we say something is empirical we mean that it can be imagined otherwise; in this sense every proposition with sense is a contingent proposition. And in this sense the existence of the world is not an empirical fact, because we cannot think it otherwise.
This passage cries out for commentary.
1. Does logic depend on there being something in existence? Yes, if we are talking about the Frege-Russell logic that young Ludwig cut his teeth on. In 'Fressellian' logic, existence is instantiation. To say that cats exist is to say that something is a cat. (The concept cat is instantiated.) To say that dragons do not exist is to say that nothing is a dragon. (The concept dragon is not instantiated.) This works nicely – but only on the assumption that individuals exist. So Kenny is surely right that (Frege-Russell) logic requires that something exists, in particular that individuals exist.
2. But can this presupposition be expressed (said) in this logic? Here is a little challenge for you Fressellians: translate 'Something exists' into standard logical notion. You will discover that it cannot be done. Briefly, if existence is instantiation, which property is it whose instantiation is the existence of something? Same problem with 'Nothing exists.' If existence is instantiation, which property is it whose non-instantiation is the nonexistence of anything? Similarly with 'Everthing exists' and 'Something does not exist.'
3. I surmise that this is one of the motivations for Wittgenstein's infamous and paradoxical saying/showing distinction. What can be said can be said clearly. But not everything can be said. It cannot be said that there are beings or that there are objects or that there are individuals. For again, how does one express (say) that there are beings (existents) in Frege-Russell logic? This system of logic rests on presuppositions that cannot be expressed within the system. The presuppositions cannot be said but thay can be shown by the use of variables such as the individual variable 'x.' That is the Tractarian line.
4. Kenny also says that logic depends on there being facts. That's not clear. Near the beginning of the Tractatus, LW affirms the existence of facts. He tells us that the world is the totality of facts (Tatsachen) not of things (Dinge). But does the Frege-Russell logic require that there be facts? Not as far as I can see. The mature Frege certainly did not posit facts. Be that as it may.
5. Is Wittgenstein a rejectionist? Does he reject the question 'Why is there anything at all?' as senseless or ill-formed? The case can be made that he does or at least could within his framework.
When I raise the question why anything at all exists, I begin with the seemingly empirical fact that things exist: me, my cat, mountains, clouds . . . . I then entertain the thought that there might have been nothing at all. I then demand an explanation as to why there is something given (a) that there is something and (b) that there might not have been anything.
A Wittgensteinian rejection of the question might take the following form. "First of all, your starting point is inexpressible: it cannot be said that things exist. That is a nonsensical pseudo-proposition. You can say, sensibly, that cats exist, but not that things exist. That things exist is an unsayable presupposition of all thinking. As such, we cannot think it away. And so one cannot ask why anything exists."
6. This form of rejectionism is as dubious as what it rests upon, namely, the Frege-Russell theory of existence and the saying/showing distinction.
London Ed offers this quick, over-breakfast but accurate as far as I can tell translation from the Latin (available at Ed's site):
For not every being has a cause of its being, nor does every question about being have a cause. For if it is asked why there is something in the natural world rather than nothing, speaking about the world of created things, it can be replied that there is a First immoveable Mover, and a first unchangeable cause. But if it is asked about the whole universe of beings why there is something there rather than nothing, it is not possible to give a cause, for it's the same to ask this as to ask why there is a God or not, and this does not have a cause. Hence not every question has a cause, nor even every being.
Ed comments, "I'm not sure how Siger's reply falls into the categories given by Bill." Note first that the question that interests me is in the second of Siger's questions, the 'wide-open' question: not the question why there are created things, but the question why there is anything at all. To that wide-open question Siger's response falls under Rejectionism in my typology of possible responses. Siger rejects the question as unanswerable when he says, idiosyncratically to our ears, "it is not possible to give a cause," and "not every question has a cause." That could be read as saying that not every interrogative form of words expresses a genuine question.
Ed also mentions Wittgenstein and suggests that he "had a go" at the Leibniz question. I don't think so. We must distinguish between 'Why is there anything at all?' as an explanation-seeking why-question and the same grammatically interrogative formulation as a mere expression of wonderment equivalent to 'Wittgenstein's "How extraordinary that anything should exist!" Wittgenstein was not raising or trying to answer the former. He was merely expressing wonder at the sheer existence of things.
I would be very surprised if someone can find in the history or philosophy, or out of his own head, a response to the wide-open explanation-seeking Leibniz question that cannot be booked under one of my rubrics. (Credit where credit is due: my catalog post is highly derivative from the work of N. Rescher.)
